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<blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5285932" data-attributes="member: 46713">Well, the old tables/values had their problems, too:- Leveling monsters up/down by a level would sometimes result in a change in their damage and sometimes not. It wasn't a smooth or even just a linear progression.- You basically couldn't create skill challenges for every level. Skill challenges of level 1 to 3 granted different xp, but were equally hard.Myself, I dislike tables in my rpgs. Or rather, I dislike tables that do not follow some kind of mathematical progression that is easily derived or memorized (I really _hated_ the xp progression tables in 1e/2e!).Hence, I really liked the change to the damage expressions. All you need to memorize is this:- average standard damage equals level +8; substract/add 25% as requiredAnd that's why I've been trying to derive a similarly easy formula for the skill check DCs.The new DCs can be approximated quite well with the following formulas:- easy DC: Level*0.5 + 8- moderate DC: Level*0.75 + 10- hard DC: Level*0.8 + 18I'm better at memorizing formulas than tables, so this works for me.It works even better for me if I understand how they arrived at a given formula.My idea of deriving the DCs from monster ability scores is close, but unfortunately not as accurate:- easy DC: Level*0.5 + 8- moderate DC: Level*0.75 + 11.5- hard DC: Level*0.75 + 18But then, maybe they also changed the design guidelines for monster ability scores...Anyway, lookup tables are imho just a convenience, so you don't have to do the math every time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jhaelen, post: 5285932, member: 46713"] Well, the old tables/values had their problems, too: - Leveling monsters up/down by a level would sometimes result in a change in their damage and sometimes not. It wasn't a smooth or even just a linear progression. - You basically couldn't create skill challenges for every level. Skill challenges of level 1 to 3 granted different xp, but were equally hard. Myself, I dislike tables in my rpgs. Or rather, I dislike tables that do not follow some kind of mathematical progression that is easily derived or memorized (I really _hated_ the xp progression tables in 1e/2e!). Hence, I really liked the change to the damage expressions. All you need to memorize is this: - average standard damage equals level +8; substract/add 25% as required And that's why I've been trying to derive a similarly easy formula for the skill check DCs. The new DCs can be approximated quite well with the following formulas: - easy DC: Level*0.5 + 8 - moderate DC: Level*0.75 + 10 - hard DC: Level*0.8 + 18 I'm better at memorizing formulas than tables, so this works for me. It works even better for me if I understand how they arrived at a given formula. My idea of deriving the DCs from monster ability scores is close, but unfortunately not as accurate: - easy DC: Level*0.5 + 8 - moderate DC: Level*0.75 + 11.5 - hard DC: Level*0.75 + 18 But then, maybe they also changed the design guidelines for monster ability scores... Anyway, lookup tables are imho just a convenience, so you don't have to do the math every time. [/QUOTE]

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